Bogota's economy grew by 10.3% during 2021

This Tuesday, the National Department of Statistics (DANE) and the District Secretariat for Economic Development revealed that Bogotá reported a 10.3% growth in the economy during 2021.

The entities highlighted that 10 of the 12 economic activities carried out in Bogotá grew last year. “Wholesale and retail trade; manufacturing industries; arts, entertainment and recreation; and public administration and defense, education and health accounted for 78.8% of the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP),” they said in a press release.

In this regard, the trade sector largely drove the economic upturn by showing an increase of 16.3 per cent, thus contributing 3.6 percentage points to value added. Meanwhile, from the industry guild they influenced value added with 1.8 percentage points.

It should be remembered that these data are presented after the two years of the covid-19 pandemic that the capital experienced. The results reflect that “most of the activities have already recovered the levels of activity they had before the pandemic”, the document reads.

In fact, Bogotá's Secretary of Economic Development, Alfredo Bateman, said that this increase in the economy “in double digits is great news for the city, especially considering that several of the sectors most affected by the pandemic were the ones that marked growth the most.”

On the other hand, the official stressed that the Secretariat has a new challenge: “to turn these good results into more opportunities and more employment”. The capital will focus this 2022 on segments of the population that have “fallen behind”, such as women, young people and those over 50, in order to “capitalize on the productivity gains left by the pandemic,” Bateman added.

With this objective in mind, the Secretariat praised the work it is doing with the programmes: Young Employment, Entrepreneurial and Productive Women and issues such as payment for employability results.

The report presented by DANE and the Secretariat also emphasized the capital's economic performance in the last quarter of 2021. “The consolidation of the reactivation process is more strongly reflected, showing growth of 11.2% compared to the same period of the previous year, which is equivalent to a recovery of 106.8%, compared to the same quarter in 2019,” the entities state.

In that period of time, all economic activities performed positively. Wholesale and retail trade; manufacturing industries; public administration and defense, education and health; and arts, entertainment and recreation activities contributed 70.6 per cent to the added value.

Even 10 of these 12 activities achieved an aggregate value of more than 100% compared to the data recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019. DANE and the Secretariat highlighted the recovery of artistic, entertainment and recreation activities by 116.5 per cent and the information and communications union with 115 per cent. “These are the sectors that have the greatest recovery from pre-pandemic levels with 118.8% and 110.4% respectively,” they added.

The results presented this Tuesday in front of the capital go hand in hand with the report that DANE revealed in February. The figures presented by the bank showed growth of 10.6%, which led to Colombia consolidating itself as one of the countries in the world with the highest economic growth in 2021.

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